Unrstandg Gay & Lbian Inti | The Trevor Project

Contents:

• A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• UNRSTANDG GAY & LBIAN INTI
• HOW TO SUPPORT, EMPATHIZE WH, AND AFFIRM LGBTQ+ PEOPLE
• AS A GAY MAN, I’LL NEVER BE NORMAL
• LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENR, QUEER, & INTERSEX LIFE

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Where homosexual activy or viance om tablished genr rol/drs was banned by law or tradnal ctom, such nmnatn might be munited through sensatnal public trials, exile, medil warngs, and language om the pulp.

However, throughout 150 years of homosexual social movements (roughly om the 1870s to today), lears and anizers stggled to addrs the very different ncerns and inty issu of gay men, women intifyg as lbians, and others intifyg as genr variant or nonbary. Whe, male, and Wtern activists whose groups and theori gaed leverage agast homophobia did not necsarily reprent the range of racial, class, and natnal inti plitg a broar LGBT agenda.

UNRSTANDG GAY & LBIAN INTI

Such eyewns acunts the era before other media were of urse riddled wh the bias of the (often) Wtern or Whe observer, and add to beliefs that homosexual practic were other, foreign, savage, a medil issue, or evince of a lower racial hierarchy.

HOW TO SUPPORT, EMPATHIZE WH, AND AFFIRM LGBTQ+ PEOPLE

The European powers enforced their own crimal s agast what was lled sodomy the New World: the first known se of homosexual activy receivg a ath sentence North Ameri occurred 1566, when the Spanish executed a Frenchman Florida.

Biblil terpretatn ma illegal for a woman to wear pants or a man to adopt female drs, and sensatnalized public trials warned agast “viants” but also ma such martyrs and hero popular: Joan of Arc is one example, and the chillg origs of the word “faggot” clu a stick of wood ed public burngs of gay men. ” In Wtern history, we fd ltle formal study of what was later lled homosexualy before the 19th century, beyond medil texts intifyg women wh large cloris as “tribas” and severe punishment s for male homosexual acts. Their wrgs were sympathetic to the ncept of a homosexual or bisexual orientatn occurrg naturally an intifiable segment of humankd, but the wrgs of Krafft-Ebg and Ellis also labeled a “third sex” generate and abnormal.

” German rearcher Magn Hirschfeld went on to gather a broar range of rmatn by foundg Berl’s Instute for Sexual Science, Europe’s bt library archive of materials on gay cultural history. His efforts, and Germany’s more liberal laws and thrivg gay bar scene between the two World Wars, ntrasted wh the backlash, England, agast gay and lbian wrers such as Osr Wil and Radclyffe Hall. The blu mic of Ain-Amerin women showsed varieti of lbian sire, stggle, and humor; the performanc, along wh male and female drag stars, troduced a gay unrworld to straight patrons durg Prohibn’s fiance of race and sex s speakeasy clubs.

AS A GAY MAN, I’LL NEVER BE NORMAL

The disptns of World War II allowed formerly isolated gay men and women to meet as soldiers and war workers; and other volunteers were uprooted om small towns and posted worldwi. This creasg awarens of an existg and vulnerable populatn, upled wh Senator Joseph McCarthy’s vtigatn of homosexuals holdg ernment jobs durg the early 1950s outraged wrers and feral employe whose own liv were shown to be send-class unr the law, cludg Frank Kameny, Barbara Gtgs, Allen Gsberg, and Harry Hay.

LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENR, QUEER, & INTERSEX LIFE

Awarens of a burgeong civil rights movement (Mart Luther Kg’s key anizer Bayard Rt was a gay man) led to the first Amerin-based polil mands for fair treatment of gays and lbians mental health, public policy, and employment. Studi such as Aled Ksey’s 1947 Ksey Report suggted a far greater range of homosexual inti and behavrs than prevly unrstood, wh Ksey creatg a “sle” or spectm rangg om plete heterosexual to plete homosexual. Other important homophile anizatns on the Wt Coast clud One, Inc., found 1952, and the first lbian support work Dghters of Bilis, found 1955 by Phyllis Lyon and Del Mart.

In 1951, Donald Webster Cory published “The Homosexual Ameri, ” assertg that gay men and lbians were a legimate mory group, and 1953 Evelyn Hooker, PhD, won a grant om the Natnal Instute of Mental Health to study gay men. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, gay men and lbians ntued to be at risk for psychiatric lockup as well as jail, losg jobs, and/or child ctody when urts and clics fed gay love as sick, crimal, or immoral. The turng pot for gay liberatn me on June 28, 1969, when patrons of the popular Stonewall Inn New York’s Greenwich Village fought back agast ongog police raids of their neighborhood bar.